I realise that I am starting to repeat myself topic wise… but somehow I can’t talk about anything else but change. Not just because my life seems to go through a whole phase of changes one after the other, but because so many people around me seem to be affected by change or by… non-change.

I am faced with a particularly difficult task at the moment. Not only do I need to balance a number of things at various moment, be it work with 100 different dossiers dropping at the same time, personal life, friends, emotions, a pregnancy… but was also asked to start my philosophical engines and contribute in that particular field of Paleoanthropologie/Paleopathology in a meaningful way.

(big silence)

Exactly.

It’s not that I don’t feel inspired by the completely new setting that I am spending my days in now. From mummified mammoth babies, histological cell pictures to ancient DNA extraction protocolls, to orthopedic pathologies in Aegyptian Mumies, I come into contact with a lot of things that are simply breathtaking. (And that is just my working group. Let’s not even start with the space group that is working with NASA on the effects of zero gravity on human cell structure, degradation and other weird stuff that involves sending mice on a parabolic flight in the south of France…)
But for someone who never thought that she had enough stamina, chutzpe or intelligence (according to the time of day) to ever be any good at practical philosophy, this is a true dare.
And indeed, the last couple of weeks have been filled with the bording side of my profession: literature research and delving into a certain number of articles on the ideal way to deal with human remains in research, on the ethics of archeology and exhibit ehtics.

And what can I say? The spark has taken. This terribly theoretical philosopher now is truly inspired to bend her mind to the difficult and necessary task to find ways to think about mummies and historical human remains and their relation to top level modern medical research.

Who would have thought?

I certainly wouldn’t have. And that brings me to the main idea that I needed to share: we never know where we end up. And we’re back to the scary parts of life. The parts that we cannot possibly control. And while we sometimes may think that abandoning one way for another one that seems more comfortable and more secure, that might just be the path that takes us all the way to where we really need to be.

Think about that while you walk home tonight or stand on your balcony, or garden for a moment.

I find it hard to imagine anything scarier in real life (as opposed to zombies or other imaginary, otherworldly horrors such as clowns) than taking your own advice. Particularly when said advice comes from rational thought and ideals of the philosophical mind rather than experience. As with anything what we think is best in general is rarely what we end up doing. If we did, maybe things in this world would look a bit differently.

I did take my own advice. The one from the very last post in this blog. It explains the long silence between articles. I’ve made the change and it’s been quite the ride so far. And no, I haven’t had any regrets. And I truly doubt that they might still come.

I’ve accepted a new job, in a new town, and with that chose two things completely out of my comfort zone: we moved to Zürich, and I chose to work in a field I only have marginal knowledge of.
While for some that may be a step down from the career that I have built for myself, for me it’s a time out. A much needed moment of fresh air, new acquaintances, new things to learn, old things to see from a completely new perspective and finally a new level of knowledge about myself and waht I am actually able to achieve.

Changing life, be it radically or a little less drastic, isn’t something that can be achieved in a single decisions. Most of the times we are dependent on other people’s choices around us and on all these small things that make up set tapestry of life. But like the unravelling of your favourite winter sweater or the famous saying about the wings of a butterfly, all it takes is action at the right spot. Funnily enough, the writers of the Expanded Universe of Star Wars call the theory behind such a technique “shatter point”. And that’s just what it is. Every change is destructive in its very own way and not every consequence might have been anticipiated. Just as we hadn’t planned for a pregnancy to happen (probably) the same week I was offered my new job.

Stalemate in any situation, is the worst thing that can happen to us as human beings. While I wouldn’t disagree on the fact that we all need stability and a certain kind of constant organisation to be productive and all that goes with it, I would argue that this is not a stalemate. Not being able to progress towards the person you want to be or the life you want to have, because you don’t have the job that would allow for certain changes, not being able to change said job because you’ve chosen to be good in a field that is transformed into a desert of austerity… amounts to stalemate. A vicious circle where the increasing level of cynism and emotional stress is the only sign to mark the next level on your very own path to personal hell.
Or not being able to do the changes you wish, because you can’t find either this guy, that girl or the right flat, the right car or once more the right job. Not because you don’t know what you want, but because ultimately you have no clue about the things you actually need.

Change in that respect becomes a question of life or death. Literally. Let the person you are die in that situation to become someone else that is changed by the situation or take charge of your needs and start shaping your life around them as opposed to the other way around.

Sure, one always gets by and there is no animal more gifted in finding creative ways to avoid making the hard choices and face change than humans. And even if we are quick to admit that we do live in a desert and that truly we should do things differently, we persist. We find excuses. We take our fears for granted.

And yet, all it takes is the first step.
Courage to you all to find the strength and the infantile curiousness to take a single step. My prayers and thoughts are with you.

wenn i every-wer wär,
wär i everywhere wer.

wer wie i everywhere wer wär,
wär everywhere every-wer,
wherever i wär.

wer wie i wär,
wär very i,
…ever

Text on my birthday card 2010. Thank you Inge and Ringo.

There probably isn’t anybody in this world who doesn’t dream about changing something in their lives. It can be as small as finally finding a better way to deal with clutter and go as big as becoming a better human being.

Dream about it… talk about it… think about it and paint the future ‘changed’ state in a way that is appealing.

A lot of steps can make up what eventually can become a scary thing: change. If we could see into the future and only have a clear view of what this change can bring into our life… if we just could have some kind of positive reassurance that we are doing the right thing… yes, that would make it all so much easier. But the truly scary part about change isn’t so much the uncertainty, it’s the going out and making it happen part that is so hard. So hard in fact that in numerous situations, we prefer to play it safe. Putting ourselves out there in the world, is a hard gamble. Exposing who we are, what we wish for, running the constant danger of being rejected, of finding doubt where we need assurance and relief, it certainly isn’t something that will bring power or strength. Or so it would seem.

But if we try to look at it from another direction, then maybe change can be the one thing that saves us from becoming what we never wanted. (…) Look at a child that learns to walk. There isn’t anything particular running through their mind when they take the smallest, but surely one of the most important steps of their lives: the first one.
A first step always holds a promise. For the toddler it holds a whole life full of danger, full of injury, full of pain, but also full of discovery, fully of phantasy, full of exhilarating sensations, full of … new.

So many occasions come and go, but each and every one of them are a possibility to take a step. A new step, the next step, a faltering one, an assured one. And of course it is a dangerous thing. While toddlers run into a lot of physical dangers while starting their path in this world, as grown ups the pain becomes more hidden, more subtle and so much more devastating. Because we’re supposed to just ‘deal with it’, just ‘get on with it’. Because in a society that only considers a person in terms of performance and buying power, there is no space for ‘not dealing’ and ‘not getting on with it’. Through these eyes, only losers can’t deal with rejection, only underachievers dwell on the bad and the fear.

Reality obviously has a different face. It talks of the hard moments when you don’t know the direction for that first path. When you have the impression of being in a wrong path, but don’t know how to turn back. It talks of uncertainty and of failure. Of never feeling good enough, of never being enough.

Popular belief suggests that knowing what you want is the first step. But that also suggests that you know where to go.

Maybe knowing what you don’t want (such as persisting in a fearful state of mind or an undecided one for instance) is the better way to go. And sometimes it will take a lot of uncertain steps, steps that might seem wrong or out of place or useless to achieve that long sought after change that we wish for and dream about. Change in most cases doesn’t come with a label and it certainly doesn’t come in one giant heap. It takes a first step. And that first step, try to take it without thinking. Just as the child takes that first step into a new and larger world full of wonders and who know what could happen once the first one is done?

There are no missed chances in life, only a perspective guided by regret sees something lost in an unrealised act that is pure potentiality.

At one moment or another in our lives we come to that point where we get that nagging feeling of having missed a chance. It can be anything from meeting someone who could have helped us to missing out on a wonderful bargain to the big chances of a new job perspective or a life changing experience. In deliberation we always work with that unity of ‘a chance to…’ and when we weigh the pros and cons of a decision, there’s always that player called ‘a missed chance’ that we measure up and calculate our future luck with. It instils dread, fear even, that idea that we could miss our on something. Something different, something new, something that is potentially so many things.

There is no such thing as a missed chance.

I am aware that this is a rather bold statement, some might even find it plain wrong, others might be revolted by it, because they are so used to that idea.

The truth of the matter however is that the truly missed chances are extremely rare. Much rarer than we’d think.

What is a chance? And when is it really gone? When have we truly missed it?

There are so many good words on how you have to make your own chances, how you need to seize the moments that across the history of human through have drizzled down on us until they form a certain pressure that puts us on edge, turned towards the future constantly waiting for that chance, or turned towards the past constantly analysing our decisions and separating them into ‘missed chances’ and ‘used chances’.
Life isn’t that straight forward and if a chance came with a clear label, which fool would walk by it and miss it on purpose?

If we analyse the concept of a ‘chance’, then one element becomes apparent rather quickly: a chance is never empty. It’s a chance to act, to do something. Thus it is always like to a certain theory of action. A second element is that a ‘a chance’ almost always leads to a decision. Obviously by it being linked to action, the decision mostly is about doing one thing or another and that leads to the third element which is change. There rarely is a ‘chance’ that does not involve some degree of change.

But the concept of chance is just a short way of stating a situation. It’s an abbreviation. For what ?

If we look a bit closer a the first element stated above, then we quickly realise that action requires assessment: action cannot be done without aim, goal or orientation. That’s what differentiates action from actionism, doing for doing’s sake. What is left out in the way we use ‘a chance’ in our deliberations today is the second part of the equation of reality: doing one thing means not doing something else.
Put this way, the ‘missed chance’ gets back its true value of a moment of decision and with that value, it isn’t any different from any other decision. The added value of change most often veils that fact. Even if in hindsight we are aware that we decided on one thing rather than on another, at the moment of decision, the fear of missing something, missing a chance, has the dangerous quality of making us miss that fundamental second part. In hindsight we barely see the chance anymore, focused on the decision. But that is only one kind of ‘missed chances’.
Another kind is the one we only see in hindsight. And aren’t these the most bitter ones? The moments when we go back and analyse and think that we make a wrong choice, thus missing that elusive thing that was a chance.
Both visions are askew and limiting. An old motto states that we are our decisions. Put in front of the backdrop of the above analysis, this suddenly becomes a true statement. Every single decision, may we qualify it through our vision on time as good or bad, shapes the here and now, the person that we are now and thus also said vision on our past. The smallest change would change the person that we are today and it also would change our vision on the past and so forth. This basic reality takes on a prominent role in the rather popular rules of time travel and its paradoxes. (Cf. the concept of the butterfly effect in chaos theory and its use in pop culture such as The Butterfly Effect [movie] or in time traveller Hiro’s story arc in Season 6 of  the TV series Heroes )
But in everyday life, where we don’t go back in time to change our lives or the lives of others, to shape ourselves to our own wishes, all we’re left with is the future and while our mind is so tempted to turn back and divide our decisions into good ones and bad ones, into missed chances, misfortunes, missed encounters and mistakes.

I’ve stated that there is no such thing as a missed chance. Usually self-examination, understanding our actions, serves the purpose of learning which then ultimately should lead to avoiding mistakes or repeating bad behaviour. In the case of a ‘missed chance’ such introspection falls flat, because there is not an iota that is changeable about it, or it wouldn’t be a ‘missed chance’.

Everything that is based on the concept of ’seizing or using that chance’ and its twin of ‘missing a chance’ is next to useless as a lesson. The same chance can never present itself and we can’t go back. All that a self-analysis of that nature accomplishes is that it makes living with our decisions that much harder. This is particularly the case since we only ever consider our failures that way. Nobody ever sees a positively missed chance at misfortune for instance. This is reinforced by the nature of pure potentiality of the so called ‘missed chance’. In truth, we have no idea how the other decision could have turned out. It could have just as probably led to disappointment as ‘missing the chance’ could have led us to happiness. It’s our visions from the present that accounts for that. Be are further along the way when we do an introspection and analyse our past, have understood more, have experienced more and that lets us have a clearer view so to speak. Using that clearer view and more knowledge to devalue our own decisions however can only ever lead to a bitter consideration of ourselves and our past.

I would advocate for trust rather than a chance. Trust in ourselves. That we make our decisions to the best of our knowledge at the time and that they are the deep expression of our reality. That we do what we can to lead a sound life. Turning ourselves constantly towards the past, reminiscing about what would have been the better choice, not only blocks the present, but ultimately scares us to stand up to the future.

Silence and creativity are linked and if we manage to free the one with the aid of the other, we might not just become better artists or better ‘creators’, but also we might achieve better understanding of ourselves and the people we are hoping to reach.

One of my twitter contacts – Masafumi Matsumoto – is following the Artist’s Way at the moment and his insights on his blog on this experience are pretty revealing and a great read.
This week, he has issued a challenge to everyone who’s reading him and following him, to simply ‘not read’. One of the exercises of The Artist’s Way is to abstain yourself from reading for a week and observe the effect on your own creativity.
Now, the Artist’s Way is something that has become very popular in the mid-80ies and the synthesiser of this method Julia Cameron has opened the creative pathways for a lot of people with her method (which incidentally came from years and years of teaching courses with the same aim. In that the book differs a lot from other ’self-help’ or ’self-teaching’ books on writing, creativity, and artistic expression.) and with the rise of chatter of our everyday online and social life oversounding our creative selves from our, is as relevant as ever.

When I came across the Artist’s Way a couple of years ago, I struggled greatly with the ‘reading abstinence’ as an assignment. This was before the internet became more a means of communication and exchange, and still was a tool for research and the occasional replacement for a physical written letter.
Reading is an integral step in the construction of our shared social and personal realities. The universe we construct around ourselves and within us are made up of various kinds of building stones: reading is an integral part of the cement that link those stones. It’s not just the dialogical nature – explained best in Gadamer’s method in Wahrheit und Methode – of every text, but much more the witnessing a thought outside the confines of our own mind that hold these said building stones together. Without it, they become a wall that keeps us within our own reality and soon cannot be overcome by any argument or realisation. Or to say it differently: instead of stepping onto those building stones and looking ahead, we step down and dig ourselves into the ground and the building stones just become a wall keeping our gaze from the horizon.

While I still hold the above, coming back to the Artist’s Way – thanks to mma323 – and that famous week of reading abstinence I see the profound truth in Cameron’s exercise that I failed to before.
Because today I deeply feel that the overall chatter that surrounds us today has increased and continues to increase still. It’s suggested to us by a whole set of social pressures that we need to be efficient, constantly online, constantly reachable and constantly ’there’ or something is wrong with us. That pressure of efficiency then pushes us to fill every little minute between greater actions such as work or shopping etc. will said chatter. A quick check on your email here, a quick read through the latest headlines there and the small moment that could have served in silence to recollect ourselves and our thoughts is gone. This immediateness and the contraction of distances between people make for a rise in stress that can be remedied fairly easily. (Fairly easily, because recent studies concerning the peer pressure through Facebook et al. suggest that leaving the chatter for a while can actually harm your social contacts.)

But for what? In the Artist’s way, the goal is clear: to free your creative spirits and pathways, free yourself to write, draw, paint, express and in the end find yourself again. Web 2.0, where the emphasis lies on the exchange and the us, makes this even more important. Whereas our exchange on the web is based on the basic structure of ‘I transmit’ – ‘You comment’ – ‘We discuss/exchange etc.’, the Artist’s Way emphasieses a return to the ‘I do’ – ‘I create’.
In a way it goes back to the first step, before you share. Redefining ‘what’ you transmit on the Web and through the new media. Without that the content of what you want to share becomes vacant, empty and we then immediately start to fill it up with nonsensical self-production. We all do it. All the time.

So, maybe the lesson here isn’t just: stop reading, stop using this or that service, but rather: think about what you share and don’t lose yourself in it.

A reading abstinence certainly helps to get a clear idea of what we all consume on a regular basis. It also serves to give value back to what we really end up reading rather than being intellectually bulimic with our everyday intake of the written word. Because in the same way bulimia is disproportionate and leaves you without healthy nutrition, so is and overuse of the new means of the transmission of knowledge and opinion in the digital age.

Creating patches of silence in our lives will not only open up creative influences, but it will also give back value to our interactions and that in turn will lead us to a better understanding of each other, because only when we have the feeling that people are actually listening to what we have to say and not just quickly taking notice of it, can we assume the true basis of exchange and mutual understanding.

In times of the internet and the quick use of any copy/paste function, where the transmission of thoughts and discussions is so immediate, does the term of Plagiarism even still make sense?

This week two topics concerning cheating in writing (also known as: Plagiarism) have hit the major media. They are – at first sight – diametrically opposed, but reveal a lot about how we see the art of creation, the writing business and how web 2.0 and modern means of communication are shaping our intellectual food and why it is that we are starving.

The first case involved star philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French self-made thinker (in every sense of the term applicable)¹ who has construed his career on said media exposition for the last decades. His latest book ‘On War in philosophy’ – which with the according exposure and the current need for answers on this topic – has been longingly awaited by the chic well-meaning, slightly world removed circles of professional brow frowners of the current Zeitgeist circles ². It is only a small ironical value of that BHL (his official trademark) has now been beaten down by the same feuilltons that usually hail him and applaud every undertaking that the great mind publicises ³. Yes, the man has been proven to be unable to do proper research. He can be seen citing a fictitious writer and his slightly less fictitious texts in his latest work. Less fictitious? The author in question is an invention by a French satritical writer Frédèric Pagès from a renowned satire paper called Le Canard Enchaîné (The Chained Duck) and was meant to wear the armour of champion of the 20th century Anti-Katian movement. The character of Jean-Baptiste Botul had so much success upon his invention that the journalist then went on to publish the invented oeuvre.
Apart from BHL missing the very basic sense and curiosity – which should and can be expected from a ’professional thinker’ – to solidify his own thought based on his sources (it would have taken him a simple Google search to unverify this quoted author), the interesting point here, is not the King’s dethronement. At least not for me. It’s as usual the scene around the throne that interests me more.

The moment in the book where this fictitious source ⁴ was used (or so they tell me, because I confess to not having it read yet), is a critical one: it quotes back to a conference the dear BHL had given last year at the Ecole Normale Supérieure ⁵, using it as what science calls an argument of authority for his own thought and he is quoting a real text written by a satirical journalist (who per se has nothing to say on the matter of wars, thought or metaphysics) who himself has invented a well thought out author with a fitting biography. Now Frédèric Pagès didn’t have in mind to gully people into thinking this was true thought by an actual thinker when he published the works of conferences by Jean-Baptiste Botul. However, BHL’s quoting – even if it’s a funny story – validates the thoughts within these conferences supposedly given in Brazil after the end of WWII.

The point to be made here is the following: No matter how a thought, a critique or a stance came into the world, through satire, through joke, it’s validity isn’t given by it’s author alone, their standing or by the measure that modern booklists give them, but by their applicability to the world. Clearly, something must have sounded right in BHL’s ears to have quoted it that way.

The second event has been breaking across the internet and the major media in Germany. About three weeks ago a certain Helene Hegemann (18) has published her first novel: Axolotl Roadkill. The feuilltons and critics hailed the book as the best portrayal of the current young generation, the generation of the zero years (ie. 2000 to 2009), a new ‘Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo’ for a new generation, even though it’s content merely shows – using a crude and current language which involves barely anything above the belt line – the general loss of orientation of kids today. Helene Hegemann is no Christiane F., she lacks the genuine problems that allowed other artists to be inspired by her fate. (cf. for instance Cristiane F., the album by David Bowie or the movie). In all truth, all these two girls have in common is that they both showed us their state of mind. Where the one from the 70ies was in no area of her life adapting or working things out and spiralling deeper and deeper into drug addiction and the follow up tragedies, the other one at the start of a new decade of a new millennium shows how much she really has adapted herself to the world and how it works.  Not a single so-called intellectual writer has dared to ask the proper questions, the only newspaper that didn’t review the book was the Zürich based Tagesanzeiger, they found the book apparently too bland and polished ⁶.

It took a simple blogger. A citizen journalist to find out that Hegemann had copied most parts of her first novel off the internet and a particular blog. A fact that the editor immediately declared a detail which the author however failed to mention anywhere. The journalists that had cherished her before… did not drop her. They were ready for the 360 for her new found prodigy, suggesting in all earnestly (the editor and author later confirmed that idea) that copying and using like that was part of the new generation’s ways of communicating, of appreciating the world and that it was completely acceptable for youngsters today. And that’s where the big division is taking place. Nobody seems to want to believe the feuilltonists at this point, because the internet is exploding with people crying outrage ⁷.

Why is that? Because plagiarism is a crime? Because we have a right to what we create? Because… they should know better?

For me personally plagiarism is the worst possible kind of intellectual cannibalism (there are nuances in my head, yes) and just as with real cannibalism, some people might find it acceptable, others might not even consider the idea, for people that live from what they write and accomplish with words, the ethical dimensions are similar to real cannibalism. In a time where students at university think that research means ‘looking it up on google’ and where plagiarism is becoming the standard (in the Philosophy Dept. with three profs alone here in Geneva, there are at least 3 cases per semester), who honestly can be shocked about a girl copying her novel?

It’s the main paradigm of post-modernism that nothing in the world can be reinvented, that everything has been said and thought and that we are all just quoting, thus rendering true art as an act of creation obsolete. This has been the first step to devalue and invalidate the creative act and it is the first paving stone of the road we are on now.

The main question to ask is obviously how the critics can hold on to their prodigal kid by claiming that copying is actually ‘ok’ as long as it’s a ‘thing that kids just do’?

The answer is pretty simple: because plagiarism only makes sense in a written world. Where the written (and printed) word has meaning and a certain authoritative value.
The internet has a colloquial sense to it, and kids today are much more geared towards conversation and immediateness. It’s no wonder they are so in-to-the-net. It satisfies the basic need of every kid or teenager or tween: I want it now and I want it all ⁸. Add to that that an author in the internet or of a blog is a very abstract entity. The fact that bits and bytes represent the text don’t help. A text in printing ink just is so much more imposing and… real.

Two cases, two countries that seemingly have nothing to do with one another. In my view they do. Whereas in BHL’s case, the scientific research, everything is given to the authority of the text, in Hegemann’s case, a novel, nothing is given to the source and there is no argument of authority other than the one of the critics who elevated her. In both cases the reader is left under-nourrished and disappointed.

We buy books and pay authors for various reasons. But no matter what the context is, be it scientific, intellectual or fiction, we pay them for their creativity. We pay them because they spent time on something that we haven’t thought of or don’t have the time to, they created something. They thought and had a will to do something with it.
The discussion about plagiarism, what it is and what it isn’t, what it should be and what it can’t be is an ongoing one. The latest book on the subject has only just come out ⁹. As readers, we live from the illusion that we are reading something new. Whether it’s true or not, is secondary. When German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer ¹⁰ stated that when we read a text, we throw ourselves (as the complete being with our social realisation etc.) in front of the progression of the text, that we assume and accept the text as an authority that has to tell us something, he revealed the non-dictum that others fail to see today. Texts are universes. They are very talkative universes. They manipulate, they play with Gadamer’s basic assumption, they shock and they hurt ¹¹. And we all take it. We take it because we believe that the authors have done their work. They have created something. For us.

It’s when we realise that they have cheated and lied that the whole building collapses on itself. Not only does writing become insignificant – limited to the simple machinality of a couple of keystrokes between ctrl+c and ctrl+v -, but ultimately reading is nothing more than listening to the constant jabber of everyday life when it should be elevating us, should inspire us and should make us dream or think.

ADDENDUM: Meanwhile, the Book Expo of Leipzig as nominated Axolotl Roadkill for their 2010 book prize (45.000 Euro). Looking at the standing now, it might not win, but who knows. To not completely throw out their chances, the editor has now issued a nervous telegram stating that in the fourth edition of the book, a ‘list of sources’ would be included. I’ve been fortunate enough to take a look at it and it’s seven pages long and presents itself as an evident alibi. The last paragraph of said list states: “Dieser Roman folgt in Passagen dem ästhetischen Prinzip der Intertextualität und kann daher weitere Zitate enthalten.” which translates to this: This novel follows in certain passages the aestetical principle of intertexuality and may thus contain more quotations (than listed here).
Intertextuality, dear friends, is a scientific concept that became popular in the late 60ies and early 70ies (under Kristeva and the rising movement of psychoanalytical thought in literature and critique of structuralism ie. poststructuralism. It’s not an aestetic principle, it’s a variation of what I referred to as the postmodern principle (“nothing can be said without quoting anything”). Intertextuality uses any given text as a marking point. It doesn’t necessarily quote it, it doesn’t necessarily plagiarise it and it certainly doesn’t use it in a cannibalistic sense. Shame on the editor who obviously were looking for a new child prodigy and through people weren’t intelligent enough to notice their foul play and now try to hide behind scientific concepts that they have no idea of. The King is truly naked.

Obviously, I ran across Eastmountainsouth sooner or later, since they keep being bumped to my shuffle list. I had already covered the group as a true songwriter jewel, but seeing as their only album never had a sequel and it doesn’t look like they ever will do music together again, I thought about posting a follow-up to Peter Bradley Adams, the brains and voice behind Eastmountainsouth.

Since 2001, he has released several albums with various female singers to contrast his ‘the dreamy-voiced Adams’ as The Boston Globe called him. Gather Up (2006), Leavetaking (2008) and the latest album Traces (2009) all hold more or less the same layered quality of harmony that was so typical for Eastmountainsouth and that drew so many in.

Out of the three I feel like Traces – a fitting title – has come back to those roots in a way that closes the circle while giving this artist more maturity and depth, even if I wouldn’t have thought it possible. There is a certain calm quality about the construction of his songs and the sound. ‘Even’, ‘polished’, are words that springs to mind, and ‘touching’ another one.

In May 2009, “Leavetaking” the IAP awarded Peter Bradley Adams IAP’s the award “Best CD’s of 2008″ for Best Singer-Songwriter-Male.

Even so, with awards and even with steady releases, Adams has never truly made it into the charts or has been featured in popular TV Series (usually a good way to get people to notice you).
This circumstance earns him a special entry in my series. I hope you enjoy.

Indulge me for a moment, it might be worth your while. Maybe it’ll irate you to read what follows, maybe it will give you something to think about. Your pick.

Web 2.0 was supposed to bring us all closer together. Fair enough. With Facebook and Twitter and co. everyone has found their little niche in which the investment that it takes to stay in touch with people has been minimised in order to maximise the immediate access to everyone. You don’t have to actually talk to someone to know that they’re still alive and actually doing ok. Just look at their Facebook activities or have a quick look at their latest tweets. All good. No need for an intervention.

Now, I don’t want to bring out all the usual sociological observations about the change in social interaction and how peer pressure passes through these new media nowadays or even the economic ideas behind something like Farmville. It’s been said. What I am more interested here is on a much more basic level than that. The online games. Facebook has done a good job at implementing the different games into an easy accessible game fix during the day directly in Facebook. I am the first one who likes the occasional Bejweled and I am also on Farmville.
Lately however a rather conservative and yes, Christian part of my acquaintances on Facebook have started to become nothing short of obsessed with Farmville. The stressed out status updates have worried me for a while, and when I heard in a podcast about the matter, that some people actually to believe that this game helps them to ‘solidify’ friendships and help them knit together more distant contacts from their work or a priest to his parishioners, I am falling rather silent and that pretty quickly.

Yes, I am also on Farmville, and sure it’s a fun thing, but do I map my days according to it? Or does the game still follow my day? That’s the main question to be asked here. But let’s stay on the idea that it solidifies friendships and contacts for a moment. How does someone reach that conclusion (other than excuse the addictive influence the game has already had on their lives) ?

Having friendships, an exchange of opinions and human contact in general takes time, it takes energy and it can be tiring. Particularly when you work in an environment that delivers a certain service, in a way people always think that you have to be receptive to them no matter what. So, these games lower that amount of energy that is needed in order to keep up with your friends, or colleagues. Because at other times, you are not up to give the time in order to stay ten minutes after mass or after work in order to get the community juices flowing and knit the group or friendships together. Or you just can’t be bothered to pick up that telephone and spend 40 min. talking to someone. Why not drop them a line on their wall or help out on their farm. Surely that’s enough.

And all of a sudden, you find yourself having spent 40 min. on Farmville. The same amount it would have taken in RL to talk to someone, listen and process something. Instead you’ve been clicking about 250 times on a virtual farm and in all actually built nothing.

Yes, of course Zynga and thus Farmville does charity and yes, of course it’s just fun.

But am I really and truly the only one seeing the obvious here? The world is becoming more and more solitary for each and everyone of us and not because it is becoming less and less beautiful (although that certainly is a reason), but because friendships that can be maintained only virtually, through the web, aren’t really worth a whole lot, are they? Or where are your Farmville friends when RL really hits you?
It doesn’t help that the only people that actually to say something about this state of ‘the world’s gone mad’ are people like Dr. Phil on MTV or other similar ‘convincing’ media outlets.
The idea to unclutter your life and start to become an influence in the people around you seems completely lost in this respect and yes, I am sorry, I am shocked at how many decent Catholics (Amercian and other) in my contact list have actually broken out in hysteria over their lost bonus’ every time Facebook has a glitch or is slow. These are the same people who are adamant about a lot of things (some of them might even condemn you to hell if you don’t vote properly, whatever properly is) and for them the impetus to love and be charitable is a truth in their lives. I doubt they realise just how much time it is that they are wasting and how much more could be done in the time they play Farmville.

It’s time to really ask what the social media is actually about? And what will it be about in the future years? Because in the beginning, it was supposed to be about people and their interaction either with content givers or creators or with other readers and users. Not to sound completely pessimistic, but if the nature of interaction is constantly lowered (Letter to Email to FB message to FB Wall Post to ‘I’m tending your crops’ on Farmville) then what about the nature of exchange and in that respect people themselves? Can there even come anything out of it that does not spell intellectual poverty?

SQPN: The Secrets of Farmville #1
Farmville entry on Wikipedia
Welwoche Ausgabe 04/10 u.A. zum Thema Facebook

The Apple Tablet and its craze offers more than just the prospect of a shiny new geek toy: my take on a rumour and a symbol of hope.

Mashable. com is usually not known for their intellectual insight in things. It’s a site for news about new media and computers. It’s a synthesising site, that will mash up all the news into small and quickly readable articles. It does a great job at it and I am glad that I don’t have to read 20 articles to get the same info. So, thank you Mashable.
However, I was amazed to read the lead title of one of their latest articles on the famed ‘ipad’ or simply the Apple Tablet this morning which is supposed to come out today: “Why the idea of the Apple Tablet May Be Better Than the Reality”.

Truly platonic.

The article then states that “as a rumor, the Apple tablet can be anything to anyone.”

A bit less platonic.

Still. The point stands to be argued. It’s a common truth that things that don’t have a substantiated reality either based in experience or axiomatic proof, are free to be filled with whatever it is that we need. The idea of being with someone, the idea of love, the idea of being in love, the idea of being successful, the idea of being famed… they all are wonderful in themselves and as such they guide our thoughts if not our dreams, because they are devoid of reality. Because come to think of it, being in love means a lot of work, staying in love even more; being successful means having to work and compromise and then compromise some more, being famed means you’ll expose yourself to a whole set of problems you wouldn’t have otherwise etc. etc.

Mashable states the same thing: “The anticipation and the lofty expectations surrounding the product launch put the Apple tablet atop a pedestal. Once the curtain lifts, it could take years before it returns to the same level of glory.”

The same is true with any high idea. It can be argued however that the ‘same level of glory’ is reached much earlier in the process. By filling what up to that point was just an empty idea, potentiality in every sense possible, the thing, your dream becomes truly real. And that in itself gives it more weight and more glory than a simple idea ever could. A lost love is always better than no love at all, and a dream in itself is bound to be killed either by use or reality.

The conclusion is basic really: dreams and ideas are bound to be destroyed, replaced and remade. Reality has that crushing quality like nothing else out there.

As for the whole question about the Apple Tablet. Will it be great? I have no doubt about it. Will it save the printing industry as Mashable states the Apple fans? Absolutely not. Will it be an actual concurrence to the e-readers such as the Kindle or the Nook? Probably not. Will it advance the victory over said e-readers over the traditional book? No.

There is a certain distinctive quality that comes with every single book that a Kindle or Nook cannot replace, no matter how many pretty author pictures they put into their digitalised book formats. The physical appearance, the weight, the difference in paperweight, the font, the printing style… it all gives a book it’s primary qualities while the text, good or bad, gives it its character. Nothing in an e-reader can come even close to that particular thrill that you feel when you take a book into your hands before buying it, because something in its cover, appearance or title called out to you. All these e-readers will ever achieve is to be a tool in a world where multitasking is a standard and where we fill even the smallest minute with some kind of chatter (the book in the train, music while walking, your Hebrew course while working out…). And as such, the Apple Table wont change anything. If the rumours are correct and it is in fact a netbook, I doubt it will even establish as an e-reader. Because I personally, don’t need yet another PC to distract me from what I really want to do: read. With the touch of paper on my hands and sometimes the wonderful warm feeling that comes when you toss a book wholeheartedly into a corner or on the floor because the author really, really couldn’t resist drawing that card on you. Imagine doing that with a Kindle?

The e-readers, reading on the computer, OCR, surfing on the phone, being online all the time, web 2.0… they all have been empty ideas at some point. And then we started filling them up with real life use, with our own version of their initial form. So, no matter how much people want to see symbols of hope in the clouds or their tea leaves, the Apple Tablet or a President, it never, ever lifts the responsibility from us to make use of that symbol. Evaluate it and then actually use it, fill it up with meaning.

A crisis is never just overcome with symbols. But they certainly help to not lose hope completely.